Joan of Arc often referred to herself as "going to France". Did "France" in the 15th century mean anything different to what we might think of it today?

by Chinkie_Winkie

I've been looking at some primary texts referring to Joan of Arc, and she would often be quoted as "going to France" as though she wasn't there already. But my understanding is that she lived in Bar, which was part of France itself. So what did she actually mean by that?

LuhanskThanks

Could you share the primary texts?

sunagainstgold

First, for /u/LuhanskThanks and others interested in the primary texts: the major occurrences are from the preparatory trial record on February 22, the second convening of the court. Here's the day's interrogation in an older translation; I'm drawing from Hobbins' The Trial of Joan of Arc.

With respect to the source: it's true this is a hostile environment over which Joan had no control (though she stands up for herself just fine--it's a great read, if tragic). Furthermore, the text itself--the trial record--is the result of multiple scribes comparing their notes from each day's testimony to make a more streamlined account, plus an overall later cast into Latin for public distribution to justify the initial guilty verdict. However, comparing the French and Latin sources, and observing that most of the work to align Joan with stereotypes of heresy and witchcraft comes from the questions rather than her responses, scholars generally accept that the text reflects what she said even if it is not a strictly verbatim reproduction.

She declared further that when she was thirteen, she heard a voice from God helping her to behave. And at first she feared greatly. And the voice came around noon in the summer, in her father’s garden; and Joan had not fasted the previous day...When she came to France, she often heard the voice.

...

She declared that the voice told her two or three times a week that she must leave and come to France, and that her father knew nothing of her departure. She also said that the voice told her to come to France and not to stay where she was any longer. The voice told her that she must raise the siege of the city of Orléans.

At this point, according to her testimony, Joan goes to a series of French nobles in and near Vaucouleurs, announces that she wants to "go to France," and gets aid from some of them. They give her money and arms, men's clothing, and safe conduct through the surrounding Burgundian-controlled territory to meet the Dauphin at Chinon.

In the February 24 session, the interrogators pick up the phrasing (or the scribes use it as shorthand in their account):

Asked whether she had wanted to be a man when she was supposed to come to France, she said she had answered that already.

It seems from all these occurrences that "France" to Joan means territory controlled by the Armagnac party/loyalists to the French monarchy. Even Vaucouleurs, a French garrison in the middle of Burgundian territory, was still someplace from which she had to go to France.

Notably, the issue for Joan does not seem to be explicitly France versus England, but rather (what had been an) intra-France dispute between the Armagnac and Burgundian parties, and their longer-standing territorial control. On February 24, again, Joan testifies:

Asked whether, when she was young, she had a revelation from the voice that the English should come to France, she said the English were already in France when the voices started coming to her.

To Joan, then, France isn't just "what is on the continent where there are no Burgundians or English present." In fact, she says elsewhere that there are no Burgundians or supporters in Domremy, her home village, which is nevertheless to her not in France. The English can still invade France--that is, territory that is supposed to belong to the Duke of Orleans, the French monarch, and the Armagnac party.